Tag: FASA

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FASA objects to province-wide budget cuts

The Fine Arts Student Association has come out in opposition of the proposed budget cuts for their department following a council meeting two weeks ago where they voted unanimously against budget cuts and the proposed indexation of tuition.

Following the announcement last month that the Fine Arts department would see their budget cut by 15 to 20 per cent which would lead to reduced classes and less equipment, FASA met to discuss their options. Among other actions, a petition is being circulated to Fine Arts students to inform them of the cuts and to ask for their support in fighting against them.

Jessica Gilbert, VP internal communications for FASA, told The Concordian that the petition has been posted at both Cafe X locations in the VA and EV buildings where Fine Arts students could sign to show their support.

Mim Lennig, a third-year Fine Arts student, told The Concordian that while she had not seen or heard of FASA’s petition, she was strongly opposed to any further cuts to the Fine Arts department’s budget.

“The classes are already too big, considering the size of the classrooms, and there’s never enough tables for everyone, there’s never enough easels for everybody and the easels are no good,” she said. “I mean it kind of creates a bad experience to begin with, so I think it’s a ridiculous idea to begin with to cut the budget, but who cares about the Fine Arts students, right?”

Within the same motion, FASA also made official their opposition to the Parti Québécois’ planned tuition increase of three per cent a year. One of the reasons included in the motion is the fact that top-level non-academic administrators are only taking a pay cut of 2.4 per cent while indexation is increasing their pay by 2.54 per cent, thus netting them an increase despite the university’s financial difficulties.

Upon the surprising announcement of the slashes in funding from the provincial government in early December, Concordia University had to cut $13.2 million out of its operating budget for the 2012-13 academic year. This forced the university to declare a deficit and interim Provost Lisa Ostiguy said that the reductions “would be felt across the board.”

In a press release on their website, FASA stated that they were “calling on the current government of Quebec to repeal its cuts to university spending,” and that following their March 6 meeting, “the FASA council unanimously voted to oppose any cuts to the faculty’s operating budget, to oppose any fee indexation, and to oppose any type of austerity measure.”

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FASA will get its representation on council

The Fine Arts Student Association voted unanimously to accept a motion that would grant them three ex-officio seats on the Concordia Student Union’s council after byelections last November left Fine Arts students without representation.

At their meeting last Wednesday, FASA voted on the motion originally introduced at the CSU’s last regular meeting on Jan. 23 as a partial remedy for the lack of representation on council.

The motion passed by FASA accepted the three seats offered by the CSU. The same motion included amendments on issues like postering and communication with faculty associations to pressure the CSU to make changes to avoid similar situations in the future.

Iain Meyer-Macaulay, a Fine Arts student who attended the previous CSU meeting when the issue of representation was being discussed, said that the motion in question was an acceptable alternative to another byelection.

“It’s a pretty good offer considering what is able to happen now,” said Meyer-Macaulay.

He also gave some context to the issue and spoke of the petition authored by FASA VP clubs and services Erika Couto that first brought the lack of representation to light.

“This petition was sent in November to CSU council, and nothing really happened out of it,” he said. “However, because of time constraints and other issues within and without the CSU, these ex-officio seats are probably the best we can do to get representation for Fine Arts students.”

Another sore point for some of the FASA councillors and executives was the fact that in the CSU’s standing regulations under article 181, the Chief Electoral Officer is not required to post flyers in the VA building where a large percentage of Fine Arts classes are held. VP external Simon-Pierre Lauzon explained that the issue of electoral postering was not one that the CSU had direct control over, but that they would work to amend the standing regulations if necessary.

“When it comes to election posters, it’s very much separated from the executive,” Lauzon said. “It’s handled by the Chief Electoral Officer, and he of course has policies that he has to follow, so when it comes to the postering it’s not our personal decision where the electoral posters go, it’s the CEO’s job to make sure that everything’s postered with the appropriate resources.”

VP clubs and internal affairs Nadine Atallah was also present at the meeting to answer questions about the last byelections and what is being done to avoid a similar situation occurring in the future.

Emissary promises

Atallah also discussed an idea she originally included in her campaign platform, to have emissaries between the CSU and student faculty associations like FASA, that is now being revisited as a possible solution to a lack of communication between the two groups.

“The way that it would work, and this is up to discussion, is that every year there would be councillors who would be appointed to faculty associations and the idea would be that the faculty associations would choose which councillors they would want to be their emissaries, so to speak,” she said. “So the idea would be that you would ask this councillor if they would be willing and if they are then we would appoint them to the faculty association and their job would be to be the go-between between the CSU and the faculty associations both by speaking about what happened at your meetings and what are your concerns and also bringing the CSU’s concerns back to your table as well.”

Atallah said that the original idea was first conceived when she was running for her current position, but that a lack of response from faculty associations on the project created concerns that implementing it without their involvement would encroach on other associations.

Under the CSU’s bylaws, it is the role of VP student life to act as a liaison between the executive and faculty associations. Bylaw 7.12 outlines the duties of VP student life to collaborate with the the other unions.

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Fine Arts representation still unresolved

An attempt by the Concordia Student Union to fix the lack of Fine Arts representation on council fell flat last Wednesday when it was discovered that the solution in question would violate the union’s own bylaws.

Proposed by CSU President Schubert Laforest, who was absent from the meeting due to illness, the motion would have allowed student faculty associations to appoint a representative to council if both annual general elections and byelections passed but resulted in no student filling any of the seats reserved for that faculty. This was the case after byelections in November left all Fine Arts seats empty on council.

Despite having been checked beforehand by the policy committee and discussed with the Fine Arts Student Alliance executives (some of whom attended the meeting on Wednesday), council quickly realized that the motion would be impossible to allow without violating bylaw 9.3.1 which states that vacant seats can only be filled through a byelection — a fact that left the FASA representatives unimpressed.

FASA VP clubs and services Erika Couto, who first brought the issue to light with a petition she brought to council following the November byelections, was not pleased that council shot down the proposed solution and then moved to suspend the issue indefinitely.

“We’re very angry,” she said. “This points to bigger problems within the CSU’s functioning.”

Couto also said that another byelection would have to be held to allow some Fine Arts representation on council or risk violating the CSU’s bylaws. Bylaw 6.2.1 states that council composition must consist of two representatives from each faculty.

Some councillors, such as Carlotta Longo, suggested that a byelection would be too expensive considering how little time there is left in the academic year.

After a fierce debate, council came to a motion that would allow three Fine Arts representatives to have ex-officio rights on council, which would allow them to sit in on closed sessions but not vote as council members do.

The motion will need to be voted on at the next FASA meeting before it can be accepted or declined.

Councillor Ramy Khoriaty told The Concordian that while the initial solution Laforest brought to council wasn’t viable, he considered the compromise to be the best possible solution.

“We’re having a lot of issues with councillors and executives not knowing the standing regulations properly. It was a mistake for [Laforest] to put forward a motion that was against the standing regulations, but I’m sure that he didn’t know that it was,” Khoriaty said. “The solution that we introduced after was a reasonable one. It was legal and in my opinion, it was the best that we can offer them.”

Khoriaty was also unhappy with the way that FASA approached the meeting, claiming that they blamed the CSU for the situation when it was caused by a lack of interest in the open position.

“I don’t know why people are so scared of saying it, but there was a position open, and nobody ran for it,” he said. “It’s true there were some problems with the other positions, but there was a position open. When it’s so important for them to have representation, somebody needs to run. If there was no position open I would totally understand, but there was a position open.”

In a statement to student media on monday, FASA VP Internal Communications Jessica Gilbert said that the solution proposed at council may not be a viable one.

“My personal understanding of policy is that by-laws cannot be changed in Council and therefore while this is a good idea for the future it does not fix the issue at hand,” she said.

Iain Meyer-Macaulay, a Fine Arts student who attended the meeting, said that overall he felt the meeting went as well as it could have, but that he was also disappointed with the outcome of Laforest’s motion.

“It is important to know the laws which govern your organization especially if you’re sitting at the top,” Meyer-Macaulay said. “When the resolution is presented, by proxy, and is illegal and impossible to implement, it sets a dangerous precedent. It also surprises me that it was the FASA reps who ended up bringing this up in council.”

Meyer-Macaulay also said that his expectations for the solution proposed to FASA were not high.

“The ghost seats are a compromise,” said Meyer-Macaulay. “They are a result of our original grievance falling on deaf ears, and a hasty ‘solution’ being pulled out of the tension in the air when we finally demanded some action out of the CSU in regards to our original grievance.”

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A motion to ensure Fine Arts representation

Photo by Madelayne Hajek
Photo by Madelayne Hajek

A motion due to be proposed at the upcoming meeting of the Concordia Student Union will attempt to resolve the lack of representation on council for Fine Arts students, one week after the Fine Arts Student Association met to discuss possible responses to the situation.

At their first meeting of the year, FASA debated possible actions to be taken in response to the lack of representation on the CSU.

Where the faculty would normally have three representatives, a recent byelection in which no Fine Arts student ran and two councillors were forced to resign means that Fine Arts students have been left with no one to represent their interests on council. In late October, Laura Glover, a councillor and former VP student life and sustainability, stepped down citing a heavy workload as her reason for leaving.

At the meeting, FASA VP clubs and services Erika Couto brought up the issue and opened the floor to possible suggestions. Executives and councillors expressed a variety of responses, including informing Fine Arts students of the situation via newsletter, attempting to withdraw themselves from the CSU in protest and even the possibility of seeking the impeachment of certain councillors.

Finally it was decided that members of FASA would attend the CSU’s next regular meeting to raise the issue and voice their concerns. The executive would also invite VP internal and clubs Nadine Atallah to attend FASA’s next regular meeting to help explain why the byelections were not better advertised to Fine Arts students, a factor that led to no candidates running for the one seat available.

On Thursday, however, CSU President Schubert Laforest contacted Couto to explain that a meeting had been held to come up with possible solutions, and that after consulting with the policy committee, one had been decided on.

Laforest explained that the idea involved changing the standing regulations of the CSU in order to allow the faculty to appoint a representative to council in the event that no student from that faculty is sitting on council.

“Basically it would be to add a new stipulation to the Senate regulations whereby in the event that after both annual general elections there was still no faculty representation from any given faculty, the corresponding faculty association would be given the ability submit someone to be appointed to council to represent the faculty,” he said.

Laforest explained that the way a representative would be chosen was left purposefully vague, to allow the student faculty association freedom to decide the matter in their own way without any involvement from the CSU.

“It’s not for the CSU to impose precisely how that ends up being chosen, that’s for the faculty association to determine themselves,” Laforest said. “They are independant and it would be a step too far if the CSU were to dictate how exactly that would happen.”

The motion, which is due to be discussed and voted on at the upcoming CSU meeting this Wednesday, would allow for some kind of representation for Fine Arts students on council, a fact that Couto says she welcomes.

“I think that [Laforest]’s proposal is a good one,” she said. “As students, we all deserve the opportunity to be a part of the CSU’s framework, and this will hopefully help alleviate this ever happening to any faculty in the future. I really appreciate the effort that he took to get in touch with me and make sure that it was a reasonable solution not just for us but for the future of the CSU and Concordia students at large.”

Couto also said that many FASA executives had reacted positively to the proposal, and that they would attend the upcoming meeting to see the motion debated.

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Tentative FASA budget approved at council

The Fine Arts Student Alliance approved their tentative budget for the year at its first council meeting on Oct. 4 after debriefing members on what happened over the summer and outlining their plans for the months ahead.
Many aspects of the budget, such as the total revenue and the budget for operations, were speculative because FASA is still waiting to receive their fee levy funds to take those numbers into account before making the budget public.
FASA budgeted for an increase in the yearly honorariums given to executive members from $1,500 for each VP and $3,000 for the president to $3,000 per person for the 12-month full-year term.
Sim explained that the objective behind increasing honorariums is to compensate executives for the amount of work they put in and to entice skilled people to apply for positions within FASA.
According to FASA’s VP finance Evans Adrian, the Arts and Science Federation of Associations’ executives receive a total honorarium of $1,500 for the year, with the potential for bonuses based on their performance voted in by council. The Commerce and Administration Student Association reports that honorariums are $2,000 per year for the president and $1,000 for vice-presidents.
FASA intially projected a $700 deficit, but has since adjusted their budget to take those numbers into account. The now inconsequential deficit had originally been attributed to additional moving expenses. FASA spent much of the summer moving their offices from the fifth floor of the EV building. “We’re now in the basement of the VA [building],” said FASA president Paisley Sim. “Our space is great.”
FASA plans to get creative in terms of funding this year by seeking sponsorships to pay for their events, as well as applying for grants. “There are all these funding bodies that we’ve never really tapped into,” said Sim, citing the Department of Fine Arts and the Concordia Student Union as potential sources of money. This year’s Fine Arts orientation was partly paid through a COI grant from Concordia Counselling and Development.
Also at the council meeting, two councillors were voted into FASA’s special project grants jury, which is the body in charge of choosing which student proposals receive funding.
Two motions regarding the formation of a judicial committee in charge of dealing with any conflicts within council, and a committee to address changes to FASA’s policy documents, were stalled due to a lack of students at large (i.e. Fine Arts students who are neither FASA councillors nor executives) required in order for the committees to function. FASA plans to advertise these open positions to the student body.
Chuck Wilson was chosen to serve as FASA’s chair and presided over the rest of the meeting. Wilson was also recently appointed to Concordia’s Senate as one of twelve undergraduate student representatives.
Dean of Students Andrew Woodall and his assistant Jasmine Stuart were also scheduled to speak, but ended up cancelling at the last minute.
The council meeting was attended by representatives from some of FASA’s 20 different clubs as well as four affiliates: Art Matters Festival, Cafe X/Gallery X, Fine Arts Reading Room and the VAV Gallery.
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the yearly honorariums for FASA executive members are $6,000 per person, when they are actually $3,000. The Concordian regrets this error and apologizes for any inconvenience it may have caused.
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